“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws.”
- Confucius
Imagine picking up a book and finding nudity that doesn't make you horny, finding child abuse that's funny and disturbing and finding an African American character, black guy, the bad guy. But wait, there's more. The bad guy is also a cool black guy and he is a black guy with a cowboy hat.
(Don't be an uncool black guy.)
Katy High School best friends Joseph Graham and Michael Comeaux authored Monomania - a buddy vigilante story with art by Geoff Sebesta. Darel McMilham, a beta male activist is alter ego ofr the hero of the book The Conservationist. We see the trials up close of a man who is passionate about a noble cause surrounded by a society who could care less. That is the human condition. That's life - real life - especially if you are in politics. You care about the community that made you.
There is a lot of literary references - most obviously Homer's The Odyssey as our hero is constantly getting stabbed in the eye.
Graham and Comeaux address the duality of the dark sinister world of politics (the hidden) versus the idealists (open) in an artistic way. Hydranna states, "Apparently this is how people get elected." Hydranna, a person of color, (this book is not guilty of Tokenism) is another baddie who plays the part of the succubus/Yoko Uno trope.
I really liked Monomania. It mades me laugh and Monomania makes you laugh. There's an observational humor, extreme tone shifts, absurdist satire and slapstick violence. It's really cool. It's political but not in the Soviet Realist sense that is obvious and ubiquitous in so called "woke" culture. It's political in the way that Monty Python or old school SNL was political. Truth be told, I don't know what their politics are. Sebesta, Comeaux and Graham have artfully told this story so well that I don't know what their politics are. As a somewhat embittered alienated formerly passionately dyed in the wool ideologue, I am not sure I ever want to know.
Geoff Sebesta (Illustrator) and authors Joseph Graham and Michael Comeaux
There's hook up culture. There's a manwos. (A manwo is not a woman, but a female who acts like man or story forced to fill a man's role). There's Quasi-lesbian Cat fights that inspires the opposite of sex. Monomania an eclectic mash up of many genres and a critique of environmentalism, corporatism and illusion of choice democracy.
I would not normally pick up this book. But I met Joseph Graham and Michael Comeaux first over facebook and then in real life. I am glad I met them and gave this book a chance.
Let's be honest, a lot of Indiebooks are just not that good. I think a lot of readers who have been spoiled with DC and Marvel (it ain't like it was) can be hypercritical because of the art or story or maybe just embarrassed that the creators have revealed so much heart in telling of the story. I myself am guilty of this not giving FUBAR a chance because it did not meet my definition of period.
But what Graham, Comeaux and Sebesta have done is created a niche called originality. That is their strongest selling point.
Richard Dimbleby: “We have a saying around here, when you are nervous about something, that you have butterflies in the stomach or butterflies in the tummy. Can you really honestly say that you really didn’t have butterflies in the tummy before you started?”
Gagarin through Belinsky: “I can assure you that there where no butterflies, moths or anything else in my stomach.”
Tom Margerison: “Your American astronaut colleague spent an unfortunate 3 hours or 4 hours in his space ship before he started off did you have a comparable wait before the take off?”
Belinsky: Will you repeat the later part of the question please?
Margerison: “did you have a comparable wait sitting in the spacecraft waiting for the thing to take off?”
Gagarin: “Ah you see, we are not in the same position, Shepard in the Mercury spaceship and myself in ours. There was no need for me to spend several hours in the Spaceship Vostok before the take off. The brief period of time I did spend in the spaceship before the actual take off, I think I spent quite a normal condition I think the scientists who were in charge of the flight will confirm this by producing the records - the objective records they have of my pulse count and so on
And I don't think there any grounds for me to be seriously anxious either at that period or at anytime throughout the flight.
Dimbleby: Umm and you were saynig a moment ago about the objective record - scientist's objective records - makes me think of something ah - when are we going to see the color film which everybody here is most anxiously waiting to see?
Gagarin nods: Umm . . . It's difficult to give you an exact time because its not really, it does not really depend on me.
Yuri Fokin: With great success, I feel . . .
Gagarin: Yes but now this film is now being shown in the Soviet Union.
Dimbleby: It is?
Gagarin: Yes.
Dimbleby: Would, would, will you when you get back home, say 'please we would like to see it as quickly as possible?"
Gagarin: Yes, I will be sure to do so
Margerison: If we could talk just for a moment about the spacecraft itself, was the cabin on view of the Tushino Air Show, the one up there on the board that's behind you was that the actual Vostok?
Gagarin: The capsule as such is not shown but the space ship itself was shown at Tushino. As to the other part of your question. I can't say exactly whether it was the exact same space ship or a republica.
Margerison: Could you give us some idea what it's like to be in this space shop, how much room you have in it?
Gagarin: Yes, it was quite roomy in fact it is far roomier than in a cabin of a jet plane.
Dimbleby: While we have been talking about the ship in flight, umm there's one small mystery which I think possibly you may be able to clear up for us but perhaps not but I’d like to try try. On the day when you were making the flight, on the day when Moscow Radio was describing you making the flight, there appeared in our Communist Newspaper 'The Daily Worker' the report that the flight been made successfully and that the flyer returned to the earth and that report was dated for Moscow the day before. I am sorry to put this at such length. But this created the impression of course part of another flight had taken place and that you had flown second. And nobody has ever dispelled this yet. Will you do it now?
Gagarin: No, I can assure you quite authoritatively that evidently the correspondent of that paper felt he was better informed than the actual people who are in charge of this work in the Soviet Union.
Yuri Fokin: May I have a question?
Gagarin: No previous flight of this kind in fact taken place in the Soviet Union or in any other country.
Thank you.
Gagarin: The flight made on April 12 was the first flight in history of this kind, the first manned space flight ever.
James A. Bretney will produce Paul Pate's latest project - Detective Perez: Welcome to Rust City. Fans compare the fun action packed thriller to Sin City. Detective Perez: Welcome to Rust City is the story of an honest cop who takes on corrupt cops, gangsters, rogue FBI agents and vampires. Detective Perez is a well done, fully three dimensional believable character. Joining him is a truly original and fun vampire killer named "Bubba". Bretney said he will be casting celebrities for the Animation Series. "Paul is a big fan of the 'Wire' and 'Homicide Life on the Streets.'"
Paul Pate completed an animated short recently called the Train Job but he said he will model the Art Direction after Afro Samurai.
